


Pendulum

by Robomantic



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alpha Stiles, Beta Peter, Canon Compliant, Dehydration, Future Fic, Gen, Heavy Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Imprisonment, Mental Institutions, Poisoning, Possibly Pre-Slash, Rescue, Starvation, Steter Week, Up to End of Ssn 4, eichen house
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-02
Updated: 2015-07-02
Packaged: 2018-04-07 05:45:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4251639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Robomantic/pseuds/Robomantic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Peter is left to rot in Eichen House after his attempt at killing Scott McCall. Eventually he comes to accept that he's going to die there, particularly after it's clear that there's no one running the place anymore. The last person he expects-- and the first person he would have wanted--comes to rescue him and Peter finds out that much has changed during his imprisonment.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pendulum

**Author's Note:**

> Day 1 of Steter week! This is just something I came up with while thinking about the end of season 4. A lot of this is inspired by things Ian Bohen said at Days of the Wolf Chicago (Peter loving/respecting Stiles, not wanting to force the bite on him, and the fact that Peter would never hurt him). Seriously, that guy fed my Steter love so bad and I don't think he even knew it (did he? lol). Anyway, check the end notes if you'd like to see who the implied death is ahead of time. 
> 
> Also, this is unbeta'd and posted pretty hastily so forgive my errors and let me know if I mis-tagged or forgot anything.

Peter stared at the ceiling and listened to the world around him. It was a cacophony of chaotic repetition. The sounds of pointless struggle and frantic whispering and screaming seeped in, even through the thick walls. They were the kind of relentless ear shattering screams that came from knowing no one is listening, no one cares. It sounded a lot like the inside of his head. 

Peter screamed at first too. He screamed and growled and raged, even with his human features staying stubbornly in place. He knew they were poisoning him. He smelled it in the stale recycled air they pumped into his cell. He couldn’t shift. They were keeping him weak as a kitten, feeding him just enough to sustain him. 

Eventually Peter gave up on screaming and began to spend a lot of time in his own head. He’d imagine all the different places he’d rather be until that hurt too much to continue. Faces from his past would come up unbidden and the pain would rip him right into the present. Peter had tried to get rid of feelings like regret, but it was awfully fucking hard to not regret the series of events that left him neutered and caged like a forgotten stray. 

Usually he only saw an orderly once a day when they would bring him food. He knew it wasn’t truly a hospital as much as a very twisted prison in hospital clothing because he never once saw a doctor. No therapy, no psychiatry, no one even checked his vitals. Once a week they would pass him the necessary accoutrements to give himself a sponge bath. That was the extent of the care they gave at Eichen House. 

Then one day, he didn’t get his daily meal. At first he thought they were cutting down on his meals because apparently they hadn’t made him weak and miserable enough as it was. Later the poison smell stopped, but the air got even staler. He had no way to confidently gauge time, but he knew it had been days. Something had happened. Someone shut down Eichen House and left all the prisoners inside to rot. He was almost grateful at that point. Peter had been dead before and he could say with some certainty that he’d rather be dead than trapped in that hellish place forever with no contact from the outside world and no hope of release.

When Peter came to that conclusion, he stopped fighting it. He lay down and accepted his fate and listened to the others that continued to fight. When that got too difficult, sometime after he heard the first death since everything had been shut down, he decided he could allow his mind to wander one last time. 

Memories couldn’t hurt him anymore. None of it really mattered. He thought Malia and realized he’d never really thought of her as his daughter until then. He’d lost too much to allow himself to be tethered by connections like that anymore. He selfishly let himself hate her as though she were a stranger and really that’s what she was. He never loved her, never even gave himself the chance. He tried to remember if he loved anyone. He hated Derek too. As much as he liked Derek, he hated him. He hated him for turning on him, for never understanding, for surviving and leaving him to rot in a hospital. He liked him because he couldn’t help it, because he had always liked him, ever since they were young, but he didn’t respect him and he didn’t love him. Not since the fire. 

Peter didn’t love things he couldn’t see himself in. He loved himself because he understood and forgave and excused himself. He protected himself and fought for himself. No one else did that. And yet, there was one person that he… didn’t quite love. Maybe that wasn’t the right word, but seeing him and being around him gave him this _feeling_. He wanted to be around him, wanted to learn about him and speak to him. He found him interesting in a way that he usually didn’t anymore. Peter was rarely interested in anyone beyond what they could do for him. Stiles was different. Stiles was the exception to every rule Peter thought he’d had. 

Then, to see Malia with him. What bitter irony. It was pathetic for him to even dwell on it, so he pushed it from his mind and focused on other things. Things he understood, like destruction. He knew destruction inside and out. Now though, now he didn’t really mind that Stiles belonged to his daughter. It didn’t matter. Nothing was real and he was dying so it was easy to let himself imagine that Stiles didn’t hate him. He imagined that Stiles could forgive him for the pain he’d put his friend through, for trying to kill Scott. He imagined that Stiles wanted to know him the same way he wanted to know Stiles, that he understood. 

“You were the only one… I wouldn’t have hurt….” Peter whispered. His voice was cracked and straining from lack of use, but he needed to say it before he died. He wouldn’t apologize because he didn’t know how and it wouldn’t be honest, but he could say that much. 

“I know, I always kind of knew,” came a familiar voice. Peter didn’t open his eyes. He didn’t want to ruin it by opening them and seeing nothing. If his mind was generous enough to grant him comfort in his final hour, then he wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth. Suddenly he felt himself being lifted and it startled him into opening his eyes. He wasn’t sure he had it in him to imagine something like that, not even if he were dying and delirious. 

The world was too bright for a moment, but eventually his eyes focused on a face that was both familiar and not. It was Stiles, but… how long had Peter been locked up? The face he saw was older. He had aged, but apparently no amount of aging was going to gift him with facial hair. What he had was thin sparse ghost of a beard. His hair was shorn again like it had been the first time Peter saw him. He was stronger too, though he probably didn’t need to be to lift Peter as easily was he was. Peter didn’t want to know how thin and weak he’d grown. He couldn’t imagine the state he was in so he focused on Stiles. Tried to find some proof that he was real. 

For the first time in a long time, Peter let himself smell. He’d started trying to shut out smells fairly soon after he’d been locked up to the point that he was almost grateful when the poison took his finer senses from him so that he couldn’t smell the fecund despair of that place. Now he was no longer actively poisoned, but that didn’t mean his senses were back to their former glory. He was far too weak from starvation and dehydration, but he still tried. What he smelled startled him so much that he physically jolted. 

“Shhh, we’re almost out. You’re gonna be fine,” Stiles said and Peter could do nothing, but laugh bitterly. The irony was killing him, not the starvation or dehydration or even the poison. The fucking soul crushing irony was going to suck the air right from his lungs. 

If Peter could have chosen one person to give the bite to, Stiles would have been it, but he respected Stiles’s decision decline. He had decided very early on that he would never force the issue, never do it when Stiles didn’t want it. He didn’t grant that leeway to anyone else, but the one person he wanted to give the bite to more than anyone. Now he breathed in the scent of Stiles and knew. The beta that Peter had made in a moment of foolish desperation. The wolf that grew into a true alpha and the very one that Peter had tried to kill, the reason he was locked up had given Stiles the bite. Peter continued to laugh, a dry and almost painful laugh further spurred on by the genuine worry in Stiles’s face. It seemed it was Peter’s curse that the things he created would subvert him at every turn. Malia took his heart, Scott gave him the bite, and all Peter would get was his pity. 

“You’re a wolf,” Peter finally said, his laughing fit over. He felt like he was going to sleep and he needed very much not to, afraid that he would wake up again in that fetid cell. Stiles backed them through a set of doors and out into the night. Peter breathed deep the first fresh air he’d tasted in a very long time. 

“Couldn’t afford not to be anymore,” Stiles said, simply and with no outward emotion. Peter had never wanted that for him. Deep down, in the place where a part of Peter was still a hopeless romantic, he’d hoped that Stiles would actually want the bite someday. That he would appreciate the power and would want it for himself without having to need it. For whatever reason, that was something important to Peter when very little was. It wasn’t anything he would have shared with another living soul, but there it was. 

Stiles managed to fumble for his keys while still holding Peter and hit a remote on the keychain. Peter heard the click and beep of a car being unlocked and instantly knew that it wasn’t the jeep. That worried him for some reason and made him wonder who’s car it was. Maybe Stiles was taking him out of the frying pan and into the fire. Still, Stiles had to maneuver the door open on his own and when he laid Peter in the back, Peter could sense no one else inside. They were alone. That calmed Peter momentarily and between that and the soothing lull of a moving vehicle, he drifted off whether he wanted to or not. 

Peter woke up in an unfamiliar place, but it smelled like Stiles. Despite the fact that he was apparently hooked up to an IV and a heart monitor, they were definitely not at the hospital. Peter looked around and he seemed to be in a hospital bed that had been placed in the living room of either a small house a middling sized apartment. No, took quiet to have been an apartment. It definitely wasn’t the house Stiles had lived in before, though.  
Stiles stood up from where he was sitting to come check on Peter and Peter realized that he was clean, he couldn’t smell Eichen House anywhere on him. He wondered if that was for his benefit or Stiles’s. Likely both. 

“How are you feeling?” Stiles asked, checking Peter’s vitals. Peter almost laughed. Stiles was so much better at this than they’d been at Eichen House. 

“Confused,” Peter admitted. 

“That’s reasonable,” Stiles said, but didn’t explain any further. Peter couldn’t remember ever seeing him so quiet. It unsettled him deeply.

“Where is… everyone?” Peter asked. 

“In other words, who’s alive?” Stiles asked with a bitter smile. Peter nodded. 

“Well it’s been about five years since you were locked up. Let’s see, Malia and Derek are alive and Cora too, last I heard. Malia’s dad- step dad, I guess- died about a year after you were locked up. She moved up to Canada. She keeps in touch, she’s doing well. Derek and Braeden found Cora and joined her pack. Derek’s got a kid now. Hell, they might have another by now, it’s been awhile since I talked to them,” Stiles said. Peter realized that Stiles had prioritized his family first. He supposed he should appreciate that. 

“Speaking of kids, Scott and Kira managed to make it. They’ve got a rugrat too. They took their pack somewhere safer after that. You’ll understand if I don’t give you the specifics,” Stiles said with a smile. Peter didn’t know what to make of that so he nodded.

“Scott’s pack?” 

“Scott, Kira, the little one, Liam, a couple people you’ve never met, and Isaac and Jackson funnily enough. I guess they liked the idea of being in Scott’s pack now that he’s a true alpha and they don’t have to be in Beacon Hills to be in it. I stayed here to keep an eye on the nemeton. Parrish and Lydia are here, no kids though. Parrish is the sheriff now, actually,” Stiles said before going silent. Peter was smart enough to realize that was the closest Stiles was going to come to saying what had happened to his dad. Peter didn’t need to hear it, he already knew. Stiles would have followed Scott if his dad were alive, if for no other reason than to guarantee his safety. 

“You stayed here by yourself? Your pack-” Peter was trying to imagine Scott leaving Stiles behind, an omega. It didn’t sit right with what he knew of Scott.

“No pack. Not yet. I was thinking you’d be the first,” Stiles said and suddenly it clicked. Peter looked to Stiles and Stiles obliged him by letting his eyes go red. Peter laughed again. What a fucking world, they lived in.

“I’m not much of a beta,” Peter finally said, gesturing down to his weakened body. 

“You will be.” 

“Why?” Peter asked and hoped that Stiles understood how much he was fitting into that one word question. 

"Because neither of us has anything left. What else is there for us to do? I pulled you out of Eichen House for a reason. I gripped you tight and raised you from perdition,” Stiles said. Peter cocked an eyebrow up at that and Stiles laughed.

“Never mind. It’s a reference to- Just nevermind,” Stiles said with a sigh. It was fairly fitting,though, even if it was a joke or a pop culture reference. Stiles had effectively pulled him out of hell and if there was ever anyone that Peter might be loyal to, Stiles was it. He was alive. Resurrected again, in a way. He was alive and fate had given him Stiles, all to himself. If Stiles wanted to stay in Beacon Hills amongst the rubble of the past and fight a losing battle, then that was what Peter would do. He would guide him and help him grow into the Alpha he was always meant to be. Maybe that power was never really meant to be Peter’s. Maybe he was always meant to be the man behind the curtain, he’d just never found anyone worthy of it before. He could do that for Stiles. 

“I’m all yours,” Peter said, finally breaking the silence that had fallen over them after Stiles’s speech fell flat. Stiles almost smiled again, maybe because he’d heard how steady Peter’s heartbeat was. It had been true long before Peter had ever thought to say it. 

“You’ll probably regret it.” 

“No. I don’t think I will.”

**Author's Note:**

> *Implied/referenced character death is Sheriff Stilinski. Also, my thought was that an Alpha killed the Sheriff and killing that Alpha is how Stiles went from Scott's beta to an Alpha. Just in case anyone wondered how Stiles ended up an Alpha.


End file.
